Arfwedson

Lithium - the atomic number is 3 and the chemical symbol is Li. The name derives from the Latin lithos for stone because lithium was thought to exist only in minerals at that time. It was discovered by the Swedish mineralogist Johan August Arfwedson in 1818 in the mineral petalite LiAl(Si205)2. It was isolated in 1855 by the German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen. 

The mineral petalite was mined as an ore in Sweden. In 1817 Johan August Arfwedson (1792—1841) analyTed this new mineral. After identifying several compounds in the ore, he realized there was a small percentage of the ore that could not be identified. After applying more analytical procedures, he determined it was a new alkali. It turned out that petalite contains hthium aluminum silicate, LiAllSi O lj. In 1818 the first lithium metal was prepared independently by two scientists, Sir Humphry Davy (1778—1892) and W.T. Brande (1788—1866). Lithium was discovered at a time in the early nineteenth century when numerous new elements were discovered and identified by other scientists. Many of these newly named elements were predicted by the use of the periodic table of the chemical elements. 

In 1823 J. A. Arfwedson reduced the green oxide of uranium (then believed to be the lowest oxide) with hydrogen, and obtained a brown powder which he took to be the metal, but which is now known to be uranous oxide, U02 (25, 30). In 1841 Peligot, on analyzing anhydrous uranous chloride, UC14, found that 100 parts of this chloride apparently yielded about 110 parts of its elements uranium and chlorine. His explanation of this seemingly impossible result was that the uranous chloride reacts with water in the following manner ... 

Joz Bonifacio de Andrada E Silva, 1763-1838. Brazilian scientist, statesman and poet Discoverer of petalite and spodnmene, mineials in winch Arfwedson discovered lithium He worked tirelessly to improve the social conditions of the dispossessed Indians and enslaved Negroes and to bring about their gradual emancipation. 

Johan August Arfwedson, the discoverer of lithium, was bom at Skagerholms-Bruk, Skaraborgs Lan, on January 12, 1792 (10). He studied chemistry under Berzelius, and it was in the latter s famous... 

Arfwedson also studied the most important lithium salts, and his results were quickly confirmed by Vauquelin (13). Lithium differs from potassium in that it does not give a precipitate with tartaric acidi and from sodium in that its carbonate is only sparingly soluble. The beautiful red color which lithium salts impart to a flame was first observed in 1818 by C. G. Gmelin (14, 25). 

Arfwedson and Gmelin tried in vain to isolate lithium metal After faffing to reduce the oxide by heating it with iron or carbon, they tried to electrolyze its salts, but their voltaic pile was not sufficiently powerful (14). W. T. Brande succeeded in decomposing Iithia with a powerful battery and obtained a white, combustible metal, and Davy also obtained a small amount of hthium in the same manner (14,15, 31, 32, 33). 

That the famous mineralogist, the Abbd Hauy, held Arfwedson in high esteem is evident from his letter of June 13, 1820, in which he said to Berzelius, Be so kind, Monsieur, as to offer to M. Arfvedson, of whom it suffices to say that he is your worthy pupil, the assurance of the profound esteem and distinguished respect which I bear him (17). 

Lithium in Plants and Animals. Although Berzelius and Arfwedson named die new alkali lithia because it was first discovered in the mineral... 

Arfwedson, J. A., Undersdkning af nagre mineralier, K Vet. Acad. Handl,... 

Although the histories of chemistry devote hut little space to the work of J. A. Arfwedson, the discoverer of lithium, Berzelius correspondence, travel-diary, and autobiography contain much interesting information about him. The superb biography of Berzelius which H. G. Soderbaum completed near the close of his life also throws much light on Arfwedson s chemical activity. 

Arfwedson immediately set to work analyzing meionite and leucite (3, 4, 5). He observed that although the leucite was very infusible, the meionite melted readily before the blowpipe, swelled, and formed an enamel. Since his analysis of meionite agreed closely with Klaproth s analysis of leucite, Arfwedson analyzed a specimen of leucite and found these two minerals to be very similar in composition, except that the leucite contained no lime. Suspecting, therefore, that the lime must be the cause of the meionite s fusibility, he mixed a little lime with the leucite, after which it, too, could be easily melted. 

In the autumn of the same year, Arfwedson completed a beautiful research on the oxides of manganese. He determined the per cent of... 

Soderbaum (1) and Leijonhufvud (2) give the date of Arfwedson s birth as January 4th die unsigned obituary (4) in the Kongl Vet. Acad. Handl. gives it as January 12th... 

Arfwedson prepared lithium acetate, ignited it, and noted the insolubility of the resulting lithium carbonate in water and its action on platinum. He also prepared and studied the bicarbonate, sulfate, nitrate, chloride, tartrate, borate, hydroxide, and a double sulfate which he reported as lithium alum. He mentioned that lithium hydroxide is much less soluble than the other caustic alkalies and that it has a greater saturation capacity [lower equivalent weight] than they. Because of its ability to form deliquescent salts with nitric and hydrochloric acids, Arfwedson recognized the close relation between the new alkali and the alkaline earths, especially magnesia. 

In 1821 Arfwedson published a supplementary note to his lithium research (11), in which he stated that the salt which he had previously reported as lithium acid sulfate must be the normal sulfate and that the double sulfate he had at first taken for lithium alum was really potassium alum resulting from a trace of potassium in his alumina. 

In June, 1819, Berzelius, Arfwedson, Alexandre and Adolphe Bron-gniart, and several other scientists made a geological tour of the Fontainebleau Forest and the country surrounding Clermont. Part of the journey was made in a crowded diligence in which Arfwedson s slender form became still more compressed. At the inn in Clermont, Arfwedson, This may serve as a correction to The Discovery of the Elements, 3rd ed., p. 125. 

On their journey to le Puy, their fellow passengers were good natured, inquisitive peasants who thought the Swedish language was a kind of French patois. Arfwedson, said Berzelius, was, in their opinion, a prince, for he was wearing in the cabriolet the same suit he wore on the streets of Paris, whereas Almroth and I had adapted ourselves more to the dirty, careless traveling costume of the French. ... 

In Lyons, Arfwedson and Berzelius observed the manufacture of silk and velvet in the homes of the workers. In Geneva they visited Dr. and Mrs. Alexandre Marcet. While they were in Zurich, Professor M. A. Pictet of Geneva announced to them that they had both been elected to honorary membership in the Helvetian Scientific Society. 

To simplify their journey across Prussia and homeward through Sweden, Arfwedson bought a fine carriage in Dresden. Berzelius and he visited the porcelain works at Berlin, where Berzelius bought several porcelain stopcocks and was delighted to find them completely airtight. 

Arfwedson s analysis of Brazilian chrysoberyl was severely criticized by Thomas Thomson, who said that by some inadvertence, he has taken a compound of glucina and alumina for silica (15). Glucina, or beryllia, had been discovered by N.-L. Vauquelin 24 years before (16). 

Arfwedson fused the chrysoberyl three times with caustic potash in a silver crucible. Since a portion of the melt corresponding to about 18 per cent of the mineral failed to dissolve in hydrochloric acid, he reported this residue as silica. It is now known that beryllium hydroxide, when freshly precipitated, dissolves readily in hydrochloric acid, but becomes after a time almost completely insoluble in it (17). Therefore, it is probable that Arfwedson s silica was really the beryllium hydroxide. He then precipitated the alumina by adding ammonium hydroxide to the acid filtrate. To satisfy himself of the purity of his alumina, he saturated the alkaline solution with hydrochloric acid until the precipitate dissolved, and added a large excess of ammonium carbonate. Had any glucina [beryllia] or yttria existed in the matter, said Arfwedson, it would have been dissolved by this excess of carbonate of ammonia, and would have fallen when the filtered liquid was boiled till the excess of ammonia was driven off but the liquid stood this test without any precipitate appearing. Arfwedson was evidently unable to detect beryllia here because he had already filtered it off and reported it as silica. When American chemist Henry Seybert analyzed the same mineral in 1824 he found it to contain 15 to 16 per cent of beryllia (22). 

In 1822 Arfwedson published his paper on uranium (18). More than thirty years before, M. H. Klaproth had heated a paste made with uranic oxide and linseed oil, and obtained a brown powder with a metallic luster, which he regarded as metallic uranium. Although others... 

In 1822 Arfwedson published a paper on the decomposition of sulfates with dry hydrogen (20). In the following year the British mineralogist H. J. Brooke (1771-1857) described a new mineral, arfwed-sonite (21). The benefits which mineralogy has derived from the labours of Mr. Arfwedson, said he, have induced me to associate his name with this mineral, which is from Greenland, and is black and foliated, and has been hitherto called ferriferous hornblende.. . . ... 

In the autumn of 1824 Arfwedson helped Berzelius and Wilhelm Hisinger arrange the mineral collection of the Academy of Sciences according to Berzelius chemical system. Two years later Berzelius visited Arfwedson at Hedenso. This, said he, is a most beautiful place, and Arfwedson and his wife have improved it since I was here last time. Inside there reigns extreme neatness and a degree of luxury which could be much less and still be sufficient (3). Berzelius pleasure was marred, however, by an attack of gout which did not yield even when Arfwedson himself applied nine leeches to the affected knee. 

Although Arfwedson s business interests more and more distracted his attention from chemical research, this was not caused by the love of money. When one of his uncles bequeathed him the magnificent Forssby estate with its precious collection of oil paintings, Arfwedson allowed this inheritance to be shared according to law with the other heirs. 

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